Читать книгу Patriotic Lady - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 31

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It was true that the antics of the old man were a little ridiculous—Pantaleone in the flesh! The fine Italians laughed behind Sir William's back, the ladies smiled behind their glittering fans, the wits had their usual epigrams. The duenna, too, was most amusing; Mrs. Cadogan, to the fastidious, might rather unpleasantly foreshadow what Emma might become, but she was, at present, a piquant contrast to Emma's rare charms.

The whole affair, to the jaded taste of Neapolitan Court society, had a delicious air of novelty. Emma's peasant manners seemed to these over-refined aristocrats to be deliciously "natural." Her simple vanity, her joyous abandon to the pleasures of the moment, her free movements, the dramatic swiftness of her poses, seemed to them to have the classic nobility associated with the antiquity then so fashionable.

To the gentlefolk, a goddess from Olympus, to the common people Emma was a saint, a madonna, an angel—to all, a wonder and a curiosity.

Emma soon reconciled herself to the loss of Greville; with a good-humoured sigh for romance she settled down to a life of compensation for lost illusion. She had not been in Naples a year, before she was addressing Sir William in the same tone that she had used towards her former lover. When he left her to go for a few days' hunting with the King in the park at Caserta, she wrote to him at once in the arch style she had learnt during her early adventures:

"Indeed, my dear Sir William, I am sorry. I told you one line would satisfy me. When I have no other comfort than your letters you should not so cruelly disappoint me, for I am unhappy and I don't feel right without hearing from you, and I won't forgive you—no, that I won't."

The winter was exceptionally severe for the South of Italy; snow lay in the narrow streets of Naples and frost glittered on the flat roofs of the peach-coloured houses. It was quite a different cold from the clouded damp that Emma had known in Flintshire or London, and it helped to set up her spirits, and to give a sparkle to her eyes. She went richly in satin and furs, and though those ladies of fashion who chanced to see her whispered to one another that she showed an innate vulgarity when dressed in fine clothes, and put aside her beauty with her classic robes and poses, she continued to please the gentlemen very well. Madame de Boigne and Madame le Brun might find fault with Emma, but they were in a minority.

Her theme was still herself. With unctuous delight she wrote to her protector of all her successes. She had been out to dine at one of the houses which received her and where he allowed her to go, and where there was such a profusion of food that it was impossible to describe; there were compliments, songs and sighing, and the suave Italians had brought out conventional similes of "diamond eyes" and "pearl teeth."

Purblind as he was, one there present, a certain abbi, had praised her—"Oh, you can't think just as if he could see me and just as if I was the most perfect beauty in the world."

Emma was pleased to tell her master also that she was praised for her "perfectly beautiful and elegantly behaved manners and conversation." She was becoming more careful too; she gave herself the air of dedicating her beauty and herself entirely to Sir William. Modestly she objected that a painting he was having done of her on a snuff-box lid was "too naked." She had her copybook phrases trippingly on the pen:

"Those beauties that only you can see shall not be exposed to the common eyes of all."

From the first few weeks of her stay in Naples she had noted his obsession, she had observed that her hold over him was very different from the hold she had had over her other lovers; she would have been a very stupid girl, if she had not remembered, and Mrs. Cadogan would have been a very remiss mother, if she had not reminded her, how very easily she had been twice left by gentlemen whom she had seemed at one time to please very much—she must not let fortune slip a third time through her fingers.

The man was old, older than he appeared under his trim exterior, and she made a grimace over that; but the defect had its advantage too; she perceived with good humour, for she was at this time without malice, that Sir William was of that age when well-bred, fastidious, and brilliant gentlemen, do very foolish things.

Indeed, she understood that she held him by the last surge of the passions, by that half-senile adoration which caused his friends to sigh, and the indifferent to snigger, and soon perceived that she might play for marriage.

The sentence over which Charles Greville had shrugged his shoulders in disdain: "If you affront me, I will make him marry me," was meant seriously.

Within a year she had become part of his life, and it was obvious to both of them that they would never separate. Even in Naples, easy as it was, she could not continue to live permanently as his mistress; already there had been some difficulties.

A Mrs. Dickinson, who had shown herself prudish on the subject of Emma, had to be, as the merry girl put it, "choked off," and even Sir William's endless tact and adroit accomplishments in all manner of petty intrigues, could not for ever maintain his false position.

Seeing Emma so admired, so successful, hearing that even the

Queen was prepared to look upon her with a favourable eye, knowing very little more of her past than the easy Neapolitans knew, it did not seem to Sir William so outrageous a thing that he should marry his treasure.

Already it had been convenient to spread abroad the rumour of a secret marriage, so that the aristocratic English ladies he often had to entertain at the Embassy might feel their delicacy satisfied. Then, this success of Emma's was not the success of the ordinary kept woman who could sparkle only in doubtful circles—it was the success of a great beauty who could grace every occasion she attended; Emma did not have to play very carefully so willing a fish.

That same bitter winter when it seemed to Emma colder than it had ever been in England, she went in her favourite plain white dress with the blue sash and Leghorn hat, under, however, a pelisse of sables, to visit the Convent of Santa Romica, where the fashionable nuns led a gay and charming life, and where they received Emma, as if she had indeed been an angel from heaven, or rather an angel who had stepped from the canvas of a Correggio or Raphael. For her part Emma thought she had never seen anything quite so entrancing as the Mother Superior of this fashionable convent, who was a charming lady of twenty-nine years of age, named Beatrice Acquaviva, merry and arch. Brilliants flashed on her white hands when she drew them from the depths of her fashionable muff and presented Emma with an embroidered satin pocket-book, declaring that never had she loved anyone so much; while Emma, who had seldom been so flattered by one of her own sex before, thought her "the most good and amiable woman" she had seen since she had come to Naples. Donna Beatrice was indeed very flowery in her compliments, for she not only declared that Emma looked like an angel, but she said she was a charming, kind creature, good to the poor, and noble and generous—for such a one it would be worth while to live.

To Emma's relief there was not one word of religion, but there was plenty of good things to eat: "I promise you," she wrote, "they don't starve themselves." Then with extremely bad taste, which did not however offend, she gave Sir William the nuns' opinion of his late wife, who had also visited the convent. "They did not like the looks of her—she was little, short, pinch-faced, and received coldly." How different, said the flattering nuns, from Emma, who was so tall and exactly like the marble statues they had seen when they were in the world. It was all very intoxicating and enough to turn anyone's head, and Emma found no difficulty in expressing her gratitude to "good, kind, dearest Sir William." and in writing to him as she had written to Charles Greville: "Ah, what a happy creature is your Emma. She that had no friend, no protector, nobody that I can trust [sic], and now to be the friend, the Emma of Sir William Hamilton. Oh, if I could express myself, if I have words to thank you, that I may not thus be choked with feelings for which I can find no utterance."

She was learning to play and sing Handel, and her master, of course, was delighted and declared it was the most extraordinary thing he ever knew, especially "her holding on to the notes and going from the high to the low notes so very neat," while Galucci, the musician who played the obbligato to her solos, seemed as if he would have gone mad with admiration. He declared that Emma would turn the heads of everyone.

Her vanity increased under this adulation, until it filled her entire world. She thought of nothing but the compliments she received and repeated them, either to Greville, with whom she renewed her correspondence, or to Sir William. She related how enchanted everybody was, not only by her beauty, but her politeness, her dramatic and musical talents—everyone who came to the Palazzo Sessa had compliments for her accomplishments, her kindness, her good Italian.